I’ll be celebrating Download Day Tuesday June 17. That’s when Mozilla will release Firefox 3, the new generation of the Open Source browser.

I have used test versions of Firefox 3 for months and love it. I love the performance and speed even when I have multiple tabs open, which I almost always do. Right now, I have Firefox 22 tabs open, and the browser remains perky and stable. Yes, it’s using up a huge amount of my computer’s free memory, but I’d rather give it to that then most anything else on my desktop.  

The 2008 Nonprofit Technology Conference reinforced my sense that at this point, it's useful to consider choices about Open Source as a continuum rather than a yes/no.   

I have been using the beta version of Firefox since last weekend. I love it! You can try it here.

The main thing I needed and that I’m experiencing is that it stays perky even with a ton  of tabbed windows open. Yes, my browsing habits include opening and keeping open lots of windows at once. Firefox has had the ability to support this for a while, but memory use grew, sluggishness crept in, and Firefox sometimes crashed.  

As reported in the New York Times, for $200, you can now buy a cool Linux-based personal computer with a well-designed suite of software right there on your desktop.

Sound like the one laptop per child program? It could be, and I liked the one of those I got to try out at a recent Ethos Roundtable meeting.  

Global battles over computer technology’s future have spread from the server world to your desktop. It’s not just about whether your web site runs on Windows or Linux, it’s about how you will do your work day in and day out. And this new battle is not a two-way, but a three-way confrontation. The competition for the desktop will come to affect how we think about software and daily office work generally.